It also explains why progress is so often secret and silent and teaches readers how to see it clearly.” ― Melinda Gates

But Factfulness does much more than that. “Hans Rosling tells the story of ‘the secret silent miracle of human progress’ as only he can. “ hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases.” – Barack Obama, Summer Reading List “ A genuine antidote to negativity and hopelessness…” – Nature “ One of the most important books I’ve ever read―an indispensable guide to thinking clearly about the world.” – Bill Gates But I hope this book will be.” – Hans Rosling, February 2017. “This book is my last battle in my life-long mission to fight devastating ignorance…Previously I armed myself with huge data sets, eye-opening software, an energetic learning style and a Swedish bayonet for sword-swallowing. Inspiring and revelatory, filled with lively anecdotes and moving stories, Factfulness is a new thinking habit that will change the way you see the world and empower you to respond to challenges and opportunities of the future. But when we worry about everything all the time instead of embracing a worldview based on facts, we can lose our ability to focus on the things that threaten us most.

It turns out that the world, for all its imperfections, is in a much better state than we might think.That doesn’t mean there aren’t real concerns. Our problem is that we don’t know what we don’t know, and even our guesses are informed by unconscious and predictable biases. It reveals the ten instincts that distort our perspective―from our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us and them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules) to how we perceive progress (believing that most things are getting worse).

So wrong that a chimpanzee choosing answers at random will consistently outguess teachers, journalists, Nobel laureates, and investment bankers.įactfulness offers a radical new explanation of why this happens. When asked simple questions about global trends― what percentage of the world’s population live in poverty why the world’s population is increasing how many girls finish school―we systematically get the answers wrong.